


Limbo

by Terminallydepraved



Series: Works for Others [56]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Bathing/Washing, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Secret Identity, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-31 05:41:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terminallydepraved/pseuds/Terminallydepraved
Summary: Being injured in the line of duty was a reality all cops grew accustomed to sooner or later. It was part of the job. Part of the covenant made with the badge. A gunshot here, a stabbing there— Captain Jeffrey Fowler had seen it all even if he hadn’t experienced it personally. Hell, he had his own collection of scars gathered over the decades. It wasn’t that strange a thing. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t come to accept.But having your civilian boyfriend stabbed not even a block from your own front door? Yeah, Jeffrey wasn’t sure there was a good way to learn how to accept that. If there was one, he sure as shit hadn’t found it yet.





	Limbo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gildedfrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gildedfrost/gifts).

> the lovely gildedfrost wanted some more of the fowler60 mafia au i did last month, so here's some more! check out the first fic in the au (should be the previous fic in this series) and enjoy!

Being injured in the line of duty was a reality all cops grew accustomed to sooner or later. It was part of the job. Part of the covenant made with the badge. A gunshot here, a stabbing there— Captain Jeffrey Fowler had seen it all even if he hadn’t experienced it personally. Hell, he had his own collection of scars gathered over the decades. It wasn’t that strange a thing. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t come to accept.

But having your civilian boyfriend stabbed not even a block from your own front door? Yeah, Jeffrey wasn’t sure there was a good way to learn how to accept that. If there was one, he sure as shit hadn’t found it yet. 

“I still don’t understand how you can afford a place like this,” Jeffrey said ruefully as he turned the crystal knob on the tub and began filling the bath with blissfully hot, steamy water. “I'm the captain of a whole precinct and my living room could fit in here.”

A laugh answered him from across the room. Jeffrey turned to look, catching his boyfriend in the process of undressing. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Haven’t I explained it to you already? It’s all about investing in the right things. Finances, stocks, etcetera, etcetera,” Silas replied airily, waving his hand in that vague sort of way that Jeffrey hated while he rid himself of his black-and-orange striped socks. “I’m a day trader at heart. Some might consider it a calling—”

Jeffrey rolled his eyes and rose to his feet, cutting him off with a mumbled, “Yeah, yeah.” It’d been his idea to have their usual date night be something quiet and intimate at home. Silas had only been discharged a few weeks ago, his injuries mostly healed but still leaving him sore and tired easily after too much activity. When they came to Jeffrey’s they tended to cook, watch movies, and have sex. When they came to Silas’s place, they did most of the same things. Mostly. 

It wasn’t that Silas’s place was  _ better  _ than Jeffrey’s, but it was definitely bigger. Bigger and fancier, with way more luxuries than Jeffrey’s humble old colonial style two-story. And, it had the trappings to match. 

The trapping in particular Jeffrey was most enthusiastic about using any chance he got was currently filling up in front of him. The enormous bathroom was home to many amazing things. A gorgeous Italian tile floor, granite sinks, a wall length mirror… and of course, the pièce de résistance: a jacuzzi tub set into the wall, big enough to hold five grown adults and a hell of a lot of bubbles. 

Now, Jeffrey had never considered himself a bath kinda guy. He was busy and he had a routine. Quick showers had been beaten into his very bones by the military and, even decades out of it, he still found it hard to justify a shower that lasted longer than ten minutes, fifteen tops if he were feeling particularly sluggish after a Friday night of drinking or self-indulgent on a slow, sleepy Sunday morning. 

A month into dating Silas though rewrote everything Jeffrey once thought he knew about bathing. All it took was one long weekend at the fancy uptown loft to accomplish it. Just one long weekend of getting to know that big California king-sized bed, the fancy California king-sized shower across the room, and this tub. This… This enormously  _ beautiful  _ closer-to-a-pool-than-a-fucking-bathtub tub with its fancy jacuzzi jets and bubbling depths and padded fucking headrests. Jeffrey felt like a pampered royal every time he took a dip in it. 

He’d never pegged himself as the type to be so hedonistic, but every man had a limit to how far his spartan nature would go, and Jeffrey found his in this bathtub. 

Smooth, pale arms wrapped around him from behind. Jeffrey broke his staring contest with the tub and turned his head, glimpsing a shock of dark hair against his shoulder. “You’re wearing too many clothes,” Silas complained, tugging pitifully at the crisp button-up Jeffrey hadn’t gotten around to taking off yet. 

From the feel of things, Silas wasn’t wearing any at all. Jeffrey didn’t try to fight the smile tugging at his lips. He covered Silas’s hands with his own, guiding them to the buttons to help him work them open one by one by one. Silas let out a happy little noise against his shoulder. His fingers escaped Jeffrey’s, moving to his bare skin instead. Jeffrey chuckled as he finished stripping himself of his shirt, leaving Silas to paw at his chest and gut like a spoiled kid grabbing for the biggest slice of cake in sight. 

Warm lips kissed his shoulder. “You’re so hot,” Silas murmured. “I think I’m gonna die.”

“Maybe I should put my shirt back on then,” Jeffrey figured. “It’d probably be bad if I killed you.”

The hands on his chest practically dove for his belt. “Absolutely not,” Silas huffed, yanking at the buckle with a vengeance. “I can’t imagine a better way to go. Get these off too. I want the last thing I ever see to be your massive, wet co—”

“Silas!” Jeffrey yelped, cheeks beginning to burn. When he’d told his friends about Silas they’d been so supportive, so proud of him for bagging himself such a young, sexy,  _ forward _ partner. What they didn’t know was how embarrassing it could be to have that forwardness play out right in your ear like this. “Don’t be gross.”

Silas groaned pitifully and let go of his belt, leaving it hanging open and his trousers unzipped. “I was going to say your considerate expression,” he insisted, crossing his arms petulantly. 

Jeffrey deadpanned so hard that it felt like his face might become permanently stuck like that. “Oh, silly me,” he said, going ahead and dragging his pants down his legs to let them pool on the floor. “How could my massive, wet “considerate expression”  _ ever  _ be misconstrued as something perverted?”

Silas laced his fingers behind his head, so comfortable in his own nude skin that he barely even twitched when Jeffrey’s eyes lingered on his body. “I dunno,” he said, licking his lips, his eyes dipping too far south to be anything innocent. “Anything’s possible if you’ve got a filthy mind, Jeffrey.”

Rolling his eyes, Jeffrey gave up. He closed the distance between them and took Silas by the arm, tugging him towards the bath. “Only one cure for that,” he figured, reaching for the imported bath salts and suds Silas always kept in stock. He poured in a measure and stepped inside, tugging for Silas to do the same. 

“Is the cure blow job related?” Silas hoped, lingering by the edge. Jeffrey decided to let him come at his own pace, and Silas certainly did, watching him like a particularly hungry hawk as he sank into the water and rested his back against the smooth, warm ledge. “I think I’d really be receptive to that right now. A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

Jeffrey wanted to laugh, but he had to be the responsible one here. Someone had to be, especially with Silas still injured. “It’s get-your-scrawny-ass-in-here-before-I-drag-you-in related,” he countered, batting away some of the lilac-scented bubbles before they could reach his chin. “So, get your scrawny ass in here, Silas, before I drag you in.”

Silas sighed dreamily. He clasped his hands beneath his chin, batting his eyes. “You’re always so romantic with me.”

“I’m just tolerant of your brattiness,” Jeffrey answered. He’d come to terms with it a long time ago, so he didn’t feel ashamed admitting it out loud. 

Though, to be perfectly honest, he’d grown tolerant to a hell of a lot since dating Silas. There was just something about him that made Jeffrey come out of his comfort zone. Not always willingly, but always without fail. Hell, he’d never taken a bath with a partner before Silas. He’d never decorated his house for Halloween just to make someone he was dating happy. It was strange to think about sometimes just how much he’d gone out of his way to do to make Silas smile. Silas had had a strange childhood, an empty one. Helping him fill in the gaps now was… strange but satisfying.

‘Strange but satisfying’ summed up a lot of their relationship, now that he thought about it. It definitely summed up tonight’s date activity of choice. They could’ve done anything— it was Friday after all, and neither of them had work tomorrow. They could’ve gone out to a movie or for dinner, gone dancing if Silas felt up to it, which he probably would have assured him that he was if he’d asked, but nah. A bath together just made sense. It’d been a long week. A long, grueling week of hunting down leads and dodging the higher ups who kept on saying he was too close to the investigation, that they’d have Anderson handle it. 

Jeffrey rolled his eyes at the thought, his momentary bliss souring. He was mildly thankful that Silas was too busy making a show of testing the water with his foot before he settled on getting in. He loved Hank, loved him like a brother, but fuck. There were some things you just had to do yourself, especially if the alternative was watching your whiskey-soaked friend muddle his way through it instead. 

Not that Hank wasn’t great at his job; he was. But…

Silas let out a low, content purr as he sank into the water. The bath was big enough for five people to sit comfortably but Silas still chose to slide between Jeffrey’s legs, Silas’s back to his chest, skin against skin. “This is nice, even without the blow jobs,” he remarked softly, his hair tickling an old bullet wound from back in the day. Soft brown eyes met Jeffrey’s. “Don’t you think so too?”

Like this, it was almost impossible not to see every inch of him. Every inch of pale, pretty skin, of the shoulders he’d mark and the waist he’d hold in their more tender, intimate moments. Instinct guided him to wrap his arms around the body in front of him, and instinct urged him to press his lips to Silas’s head. But a gasp sounded, and Jeffrey’s training was too ingrained to shake so easily. Silas stiffened slightly. Jeffrey immediately realized his blunder and loosened his hold until it no longer aggravated Silas’s healing wound.

The body in his arms went forcibly slack. 

“Yeah,” Jeffrey said a beat too late. He looked at the bubbles hiding the worst of the wound from sight. “Nice.”

For some reason it’d been easier to ignore that incision mark when they had still been outside of the tub. Jeffrey didn’t like thinking about those tense few weeks Silas spent in the hospital. He didn’t like seeing his boyfriend in that bed, in that gown, pale as a corpse and still smiling and lying like nothing had happened to him worth noting. They’d argued about it—  _ God _ , had they argued about it. A dam had broken after that first altercation, the pieces not adding up, Silas’s excuses falling so short of assuaging Jeffrey’s mind that things weren’t what they clearly seemed to be. It’d been… tough to keep visiting. Not because Jeffrey didn’t want to see him— that desire to see Silas was what  _ kept  _ him coming back. No, it was the lies, false promises, the… the half-assed excuses that just didn’t satisfy the way they had before Silas wound up with a knife in his gut and Jeffrey with blood stains on the sidewalk outside his door.

He had to walk by them every morning to get to his car. Maybe it was his imagination—or maybe just the guilt—but they didn’t seem to fade, no matter how hard it rained. 

Silas shifted in his arms and rested his head on his shoulder. His breath was warm, smooth, regular. Jeffrey turned towards him automatically, pressing his lips to his hair. At some point they’d just stopped talking about it at all. The normalcy of life from before was too tempting to give up entirely. They wanted to go back to it. Jeffrey couldn’t begrudge them that. 

Still. 

A damp hand touched his cheek. Jeffrey blinked, breaking his staring contest with the loofah in the corner to look at Silas’s questioning face. When he first met Silas he’d thought he had a soft, friendly look about him. After getting to know him, he’d revised his opinion. Silas was like a switchblade more than a cotton ball. Harmless when sheathed, shiny, and beautiful. But sometimes… Sometimes he had an air about him that was razor sharp, unsettling. Jeffrey had only seen that side of him a few times, usually when Silas hadn’t known he’d been watching. 

But right now wasn’t one of those moments. Silas looked soft. His hair was wet and curling from the steam coming off the warm water, his cheeks flushed, his eyes a little hazy. His touch was gentle on Jeffrey’s cheek, and his voice was thick and syrupy as he asked, “What are you thinking about?” It was lethal, that combination. As lethal as a blade through the heart. 

Jeffrey let out a breath and found it catching in his throat. He averted his eyes, but the damage had already been done. Silas’s hand tightened on his chin, fingers wrapping around his jaw. Jeffrey’s head turned at the behest of that hand, his eyes meeting Silas’s only a little unwillingly. It was in moments like these that he felt in the very pit of his heart that he was wrong. Wrong about Silas, wrong about what he’d heard on that phone call. Silas felt good in his lap. His skin felt good against his own. He just— 

“What are you thinking about, Jeffrey?” Silas asked again, softer now, closer. His lips met Jeffrey’s cheek and a shiver rolled down Silas’s spine, transferring to Jeffrey through his fingers lingering on his boyfriend’s lower back. 

“Um. Nothing much,” he said, not fighting it when those lips shifted to his own, stealing a kiss. It was effortlessly sweet and heart-numbingly pleasant. Soft, wet fingers skimmed over his scalp, holding him close. Silas kissed him again. 

“I don’t believe you at all,” he murmured. His forefinger poked the spot between Jeffrey’s brows. “You’ve got that frustrated look on your face. Something’s on your mind.” Silas pouted. “I should be the only one you’re thinking about, Jeffrey.”

God. Jeffrey was caught between rolling his eyes and paling. “You definitely are on my mind,” he said, thumbs drawing worried little circles on Silas’s hips. “I promise.”

“Then why aren’t you enjoying yourself? Hmm?” Another deluge of kisses, another bout of pressure against his front, waking up a part of his anatomy he hadn’t really thought was on the table tonight. Silas was good at that though. He wasn’t what Jeffrey would call hot-blooded, ready to roll in the sheets any time, anywhere, but his youth was there. It reminded Jeffrey sometimes how energetic Silas could be, how it would only take a few lingering kisses and some skin-on-skin contact to put him in a mood for more. 

Jeffrey found himself responding though, just as he always did. He was criminally easy to work up with Silas so close, his scent so present in his nose. “I’m… enjoying myself,” he promised, running his hands up and down Silas’s narrow waist, along his ribs, teasing him gently for fear of putting too much pressure on his still healing wound. 

Silas’s eyes flicked down, a smile curling on his lips. He met Jeffrey’s eyes and purred, “Well, I can see that now.” Pearly white teeth sank into a plump bottom lip. Silas arched a little as Jeffrey kept touching him. “There’s just one thing though,” he said, breathy and light. 

Jeffrey was barely listening, attention too caught by the way he moved in his hands. “Hmm?”

“I’m a curious sort.”

Yeah. That was an understatement. Jeffrey gave another hum to show he was listening.

Silas leaned closer, their chests flush with one another. Sharp teeth nipped Jeffrey’s ear, and a hot, wet tongue soothed the sting a moment later. “I’m still curious what you were thinking about. It can’t be nothing; you’ve got me naked in your lap and you still took you ten minutes to start fondling me.”

“It wasn’t anything perverted,” Jeffrey said, torn back to the present when he wanted the exact opposite, “if that’s what you’re after.”

Another pout. Silas looked down his body and rested his fingers lightly on Jeffrey’s wrists, holding his hands to keep them on his chest. “Don’t say that,” he complained. “You’ll destroy all my hopes and dreams.”

Sighing, Jeffrey gave up. “You really wanna know?”

Silas nodded, smile turning coquettish as if he truly believed Jeffrey was thinking filthy things all along. 

Jeffrey’s eyes fell to Silas’s abdomen. It had been perfection incarnate the first time Jeffrey saw it, all pale skin, lightly toned muscle, and teasing little moles dotting his skin. There was just one flaw in sight, and even then it wasn’t much of a deterrent. More of a… reminder. A reminder of how close Jeffrey had come to losing Silas. Of letting him bleed out on the sidewalk right outside his front door.

“Jeffrey?”

There was a war inside him, one side urging him to meet Silas’s gaze and smile, the other fixing itself on that half-healed scar. To comfort or to ruminate: those were the only options he seemed to have anymore and neither was particularly productive in doing something about the sickly guilt and anger pooling in Jeffrey’s stomach. 

A soft sigh sounded above his head. “Is this about my injury again?”

Jeffrey stiffened. He kept staring at the cut. 

Silas’s hands fell to Jeffrey’s shoulders, massaging them gently, his body melting down to cover him like a blanket. “You can’t keep fixating on it,” he whispered, voice sweet, thick, his hands fondling now like a distraction. “I’m fine, aren’t I? You can’t be the only one with interesting, sexy scars, you know.”

Jeffrey swallowed, meeting Silas’s eyes at long last. His fingers skimmed the puckered pink line protectively. “You’re a civilian, Silas. You don’t need scars like these.” He swallowed, the frustration mounting, the anger building. “I’m going to find the person who did this,” he swore. He had more officers on the case than any of the other active files currently on deck, and if he’d been able to manage it, he’d have put more on besides. “You shouldn’t have ever been hurt in the first place, and I’m never going to let it happen to you again. I don’t care what I have to do to make it happen. I’ll put half the city behind bars if I have to.”

“My hero,” Silas purred, his thigh rocking against Jeffrey’s length, coaxing it into full hardness. “My big, strong captain. You make me want to play the damsel when you talk like that.”

His tone was teasing, like they were playing a game in bed. “I’m serious,” Jeffrey pressed, hooking a hand around Silas’s thigh to pull it away from his dick. He swallowed, keeping his eyes up, away from the evidence of how their bodies eagerly desired anything but talk right now. “I want you to know that. I’m going to keep you safe, Silas. I don’t want you to be afraid ever again.”

Something flickered over Silas’s face, there one second and gone the next. His hands, damp and soft, cupped Jeffrey’s face, cradling him as if he were the fragile one. When he spoke again, his voice was thoughtful, hypnotic. 

Targeted. 

“It was just a freak accident. Those happen every day. You’re a cop, Jeffrey. You should know that better than anyone.” Silas’s voice was soothing, low, his eyes downcast and his hands petting and stroking and treating Jeffrey like a startled horse that needed consoling. He slowly met eyes with him though, a gentle smile on his lovely face. “So, that’s why I don’t like the thought of you spreading yourself so thin for me. Things have a way of working themselves out in the end. You should focus on other cases, on taking care of yourself. I’m sure the asshole who did that to me will turn up sooner or later, so there’s no need to tear the city apart. Understand?”

Silas punctuated his little speech with a sweet kiss to Jeffrey’s cheek. It was nice, that kiss. Tender, loving, everything a kiss should be. But Jeffrey didn’t relax. He couldn’t. 

“How are you so blasé about this?” It made no sense. Anyone would be shaky after being stabbed like that, after nearly  _ dying  _ at the hands of some crazy fucker with a knife. “It happened on my street, Silas. Stabbings don’t just happen here.” Jeffrey’s voice was rising, his temper building. Their argument from the hospital rose up unbidden into his mind. “Every time this comes up, you deflect. Why?”

Without missing a beat, as if practiced to perfection, Silas sighed and kissed him. “Because it was nothing to worry about,” he said against his lips. His warm eyes looking into Jeffrey’s so softly as he cupped his face in his hands. “You can trust me, Jeffrey,” he promised. “You should just put it out of your mind and focus on some other cases for awhile.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, letting himself be kissed again and again. So, now it was drop the case entirely, focus on others. “I see.”

“You do?” Silas purred once more, nuzzling his cheek. “I’m glad you see it my way.”

He saw it some way, but not Silas’s. Jeffrey grew stiff and unresponsive, but Silas didn’t seem to notice. His kisses shifted to his cheek, his temple. Jeffrey stopped noticing the hot water and the scent of Silas, of flowers. His heart raced, then slowed. There was just one thought in his head. One quiet, insidious thought.

_ My lover is lying to me. _

But just like every other time doubt crept into the corners of his mind, Jeffrey tried to rationalize it away, like a child reasoning away a shadow looming in the corner of their room. Silas wasn’t always like this. It made it easier to focus on the normal moments since they vastly outnumbered the less than savory ones. Silas was tired, his mind told him. Silas was still feeling the painful aftermath of his injury and that was… that was what? Making him come up with thin excuses for Jeffrey not to do his job? Making him cagey and avoidant every time this topic came up? Any normal person would…

Would do what? Not this. Jeffrey knew not this. 

Jeffrey swallowed. That was the thing though, wasn’t it? He didn’t think Silas  _ was  _ a normal person. 

And it wasn’t just this slip up that made him think so. It was the nights when Silas said he’d be home and then wasn’t when Jeffrey tried to surprise him with takeout and a bottle of wine. It was the four a.m. phone calls that always,  _ always  _ pulled Silas out of bed, no matter how much Jeffrey told him that work could wait until morning. It was the… the expressions, the waves of  _ something  _ that would linger on Silas’s face after some of those calls. 

It was the feeling that no matter how many times Silas promised he was just some normal guy, that it was all a lie. 

That everything Jeffrey knew about Silas was a lie. That it’d been that way ever since they’d first met. 

“You can’t keep lying to me like this,” Jeffrey said, the exhaustion bleeding through him faster than he could combat. 

A crack in Silas’s composure flickered across his face. Like a reflex he said, “I’m not—”

Jeffrey’s arms tightened unconsciously, and he countered it sharply with, “Don’t.” 

Silas immediately fell silent. Maybe from the twinge of pain. Maybe from the guilt he seemed to hide so well. 

Jeffrey inhaled. He held it in for a few seconds, then let it out. “If you respect me at all, you won’t finish that sentence.”

Silas stayed silent. 

For some reason, that silence stabbed a knife straight through Jeffrey’s heart. 

“You know I love you, right?” Jeffrey said evenly. It hadn’t been the first time he’d said it, but sometimes it felt like it was when Silas reacted the same each time he did. Ears pink, cheeks flushed, eyes wide and hopeful like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, but by God did he want him to say it again. This time was no different, even with Silas mostly facing away from him. His cheeks still went pink. His ears still reddened to match. 

“I know,” Silas said quietly. “I… I love you too.”

Jeffrey’s heart constricted painfully. “Then why can’t you just be honest with me?”

A pause. “I’ll tell you soon,” Silas whispered, his eyes hidden by his hair. “Just… please. Give me some time.”

“How much longer can I give you?” Jeffrey had to wonder, staring up at the ceiling. He’d waited for… for weeks now, waited at his bedside in that hospital and beside him on the couch when he’d been given the all clear to return home. He’d asked him again and again, paid closer attention to the phone calls Silas swiftly learned to take once he’d gone home for the night. There was only so much a man could take before he had to say enough was enough.

Just how much more could he take? Just how much more was enough?

“It’s complicated.”

Jeffrey wanted to shake him. He’d been stabbed. He’d nearly  _ died.  _ With alarming alacrity, he recalled looking at Silas’s medical chart while waiting at his bedside, watching him sleep off the painkillers of his initial operation. It’d been so close, so dangerously close to being a fatal injury. A quarter of an inch lower and the blade would have hit a kidney. Half an inch higher and he would have bled out before the ambulance could have reached him. 

He’d seen wounds like this before in the field, and they didn’t come from muggers and thieves. The precise angle, the lack of hesitation at digging deep and digging in  _ hard—  _ Commitment like that didn’t come from a random happenstance. It came from someone who knew what he was doing. 

Normal people weren’t targeted by professionals.

Jeffrey huffed tiredly. “I’ve realized.” The truth of the matter was nipping his heels, wasn’t it? If this were anything else, about anyone else, he would have already come to a conclusion and been done with it. Sticking his head in the sand wouldn’t work for much longer. The truth was going to come out sooner or later, but God, Jeffrey wanted it to come from Silas’s mouth, not from the next case file to come across his desk. 

Silas rested his head on Jeffrey’s shoulder, his soft hair tickling an old bullet wound. “Can we… stop talking about it for tonight?” he asked, voice small. 

All he could do was wait until it came, in whatever form happened first. 

Jeffrey frowned and held Silas’s stiff body a little tighter. 

“Yeah,” he relented quietly, closing his eyes. 

He was beginning to get tired of that being his only option these days. 

**Author's Note:**

> woot! hope you liked it! if so, consider leaving a nice comment here and following me on twitter @tdcloud_writes for more dbh funtimes, and hey, if you like this and wanna see what else i get up to when im not writing fanfic, you can check out my original content over on my website at tdcloudofficial.com! until next time!


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